Bonitasoft is a global company democratizing business process automation through its open-source software Bonita. Bonita can automate any process involving humans, systems, and robots interacting. In simple terms, wherever humans interact with complex systems, Bonita helps.
This software, designed originally for developers, is available for download without signing up, doing a trial, or talking to a sales associate. Since the COVID crisis, many people have realized they need to do a better job in automating, and the company has seen a surge in platform usage.
Why Bonita?
Bonita helps large enterprises to automate their processes, define those processes and develop end-to-end process automation with any scope or complexity.
The company has a dedicated software product focused on technical developers. In the automation market, most of its competitors have a visual tool that helps those that aren’t developers to build process automation. Although that is available with Bonita, the platform has more developer-focused tools. Bonitasoft believes that serious process automation projects can only be successful if developers are involved.
The extensibility of the platform is a bonus. Bonitasoft made the platform appealing to developers with many extension points. If a developer is working on a project that is not out of the box, Bonita has a workaround. There is always an extension point with the platform, so if a user is familiar with coding, they can make anything happen.
The Bonita platform is geared towards large complex organizations, complex implementations, extensibility, and coding in the platform. It is preferred by large enterprises with big projects to tackle, rather than small and simple projects.
Bonitasoft allows users to develop in or out of Bonita Studio.
Service Offerings
Bonita has three different service offerings to suit the client’s budget and needs. First, it has the open-source, free-to-download Bonita platform that allows users to do an end-to-end business process automation system. The open-source edition can do everything related to developing automation. In January 2021, Bonitasoft added more capabilities to the open-source version, including Bonita UI Designer, Studio, and Engine.
Secondly, the company offers a commercial license, allowing platform users to manage and operate the open-source platform with applications such as monitoring, scalability, error management, and elasticity. This is an open core model, similar to the one Red Hat uses.
Thirdly, Bonitasoft has released a turn-key offering for business people or those without in-depth coding abilities. For the turn-key offering, Bonitasoft defines the scope of the first integration of a business automation project and guarantees that for a fixed price that the project will happen and be successful. The company can choose to work with other developers to do it, shadow Bonita developers, or Bonitasoft can take responsibility for the entire first implementation from end-to-end.
Bonitasoft has split its product’s capabilities into visual programming capabilities vs. coding capabilities to serve both developers and business users better. Through the user-flow of the system and the product, users that don’t have development skills are directed to the capabilities they can use to do the first iteration of their project. If the user needs help from a developer, that help is available, and the developers address the problem directly.
Conclusion
Bonita allows everyone to start a business process automation project with the open-source platform, and there is no limitation to putting the project into production. However, if a user wants to get more serious about the implementation, they may need to upgrade to the commercial license.
Bonita appeals to a wide range of business process automation needs with such flexible models, from the highly complex developer-only implementations to a business-minded user who wants a turn-key offering. The choice is entirely up to the client.
